News from the Field 2023

Peru. This volume reports on the salvage excavations she directed after discovering scattered human remains on the surface of the site. These remains—from a partially looted cemetery dating to AD 1000–1470—consist of men, women, and children buried in multiperson cists, one of which included 18 individuals. Some of the women were associated with belt looms, woolen bags, workbaskets filled with cotton and wool yarn balls, needles in needlecases, barcoded spindles, and decorated spindle whorls. Some of the men were buried with fishing nets, slings, bolas, metal tweezers, and breechclouts. Some of the children were associated with miniature vessels, gourd bowls with food, and bracelets and necklaces consisting of seeds strung on cords. The two previous volumes on Cerro Azul reported on the architecture, pottery, and coastal ecosystems. Marcus continues to serve as editor of the Biographical Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences and on the editorial board of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). One other activity in which she is engaged is supplying background materials (ethnohistoric and archaeological) for the new museum located at the archaeological site of Cerro Azul, which the Peruvian government has recently declared a national historic monument.

United States

UMMAA curator John O’Shea spent the bulk of the field season working on and below Lake Huron. Dr. Morgan Smith of the University of Tennessee-Chattanooga joined the research team of Brendan Nash (PhD candidate at UMMAA) and U-M alumna Dr. Ashley Lemke (University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee) to test the ability of the subbottom profiler to identify buried deposits and lithic scatters on the lake bottom. The technology produced promising results, which were ground-truthed via SCUBA later in the season.

The summer also saw students and teachers from Alpena High School testing their predictions for the existence of underwater sites in real time on Lake Huron. The students in the Science in the Sanctuary class at Alpena High spent the winter semester exploring the simulated ancient environment on the Alpena-Amberley Ridge using the immersive virtual reality system, Deep Dive, which has been developed in collaboration with Dr. Robert Reynolds and his computer science students at Wayne State University.

Through the generosity of Jeff Gray, superintendent of the Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary, the students and their teachers were able to travel to central Lake Huron and examine their top selected locations via a remote operated vehicle. This is the second year of the collaboration with Alpena High School. In the coming years Reynolds and his team plan to expand the Deep Dive system to allow the students in Alpena to collaborate in real time with students in the Native village of Kotzebue, Alaska, to explore the cultural use of the ancient submerged landscape.

In January 2023, Elspeth Geiger defended her dissertation: Power and Provisions in Anishinaabewaki: ReContextualizing Human-Environment Interactions During the Great Lakes Fur Trade. This research focused on the early French period (AD 1650–1760) in northern Michigan. She examined the role Anishinaabe human-environmental interactions played in avoiding coercion, provisions for travel, and maintaining territorial claims.

In December, Elspeth will join the Field Museum of Natural History as a curator path research scientist in anthropology with a joint appointment in the Department of Anthropology at Northwestern University.

Graduate student Laura Bossio spent much of her spring and summer in Ohio, where she conducted geophysical survey with OVAI, Inc. at a Late Precontact site in Perrysburg. Geophysical anomalies were cored and cultural features were verified. This work is essential for her dissertation. Laura also worked with the Fort Meigs Historic site, funded by the Student-Identified Rackham